At four years old, Stephen Davey and his older brother raided the medicine cabinet for what looked like orange candy — it was aspirin, and both boys ended up on emergency room tables having their stomachs pumped. Davey opens with that memory to make a point about virtue: what we value and what's actually good for us aren't always the same thing. He contrasts the world's billion-dollar obsession with age-reversing supplements against Peter's own supplement list in 2 Peter 1:5-8, seven qualities every believer is urged to add to their faith, starting with virtue, defined here as excellence, doing what God assigned you with focus and urgency. Davey tells of an 83-year-old Sunday school teacher who rode a Greyhound bus overnight to a conference just to become a better teacher, decades into faithfully teaching fifth-grade boys. The question isn't how long you'll live. It's whether you're pursuing excellence with the time you've got.
The Passionate Pursuit of Excellence
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